A semiconductor device manufacturing process includes liquid processings such as, for example, a wet etching and a chemical liquid cleaning. The liquid processing includes a chemical liquid processing process of supplying a chemical liquid to a substrate such as a wafer, a rinsing process of supplying a rinse liquid (e.g., deionized water) to the substrate to remove the chemical liquid and a reaction product, a replacing process of replacing the deionized water on the substrate with a dry organic solvent having a higher volatility and a lower surface tension than those of the deionized water, with, for example, isopropyl alcohol (IPA), and a drying process of drying the organic solvent (see, e.g., Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2010-045389)
Especially, when a pattern with a high aspect ratio is formed on a substrate, a phenomenon may be caused in which convex portions (columnar portions) at the opposite sides of a concave portion are deformed to bring the tip ends of the convex portions to be in contact with each other, due to the surface tension of the liquid (e.g., the rinse liquid) when the liquid moves out of the concave portion. The occurrence of the deformation of the convex portions may be suppressed by performing the drying process after replacing the deionized water that has penetrated into the pattern with IPA. However, it is difficult to thoroughly suppress the occurrence of the deformation of the convex portions.